So I took a break for a couple of months while I waited to see where things went after the apocalyptically terrible launch period. I’ve been watching the announcements (thanks FS, I appreciate the comms!) and thought I’d jump back on after seeing that the armory had been moved next door to the crafting bench (no, I’m not kidding).
Here’s my current impressions in no particular order.
Gameplay is still good, but meta builds make it easy and boring. The game is most fun when people are just using whatever random non-meta builds and SHTF moments are around every corner. Damnation is too easy because everyone there is running meta and knows how to play.
I no longer care about crafting. At all. Finding and building the perfect weapon is no longer a driver for me because it’s all just too much. V2’s crafting RNG was annoying, but tolerable. DT turns it up to 11. I was hoping the changes/additions to crafting would make it better, but they didn’t. The inventory and crafting UIs are both bad. It’s hard to find what I want and I’m always concerned that I’m about to salvage/destroy the wrong item.
Because crafting isn’t a thing for me anymore, and crafting is the main progression mechanism, there is now no progression mechanism. There is no reason to play this game outside of the core gameplay. My rational brain is saying “well duh, that’s how it should be”, but the part of my brain that’s been ruined by the constant stream of dopamine that modern game design pumps into everything is saying it’ll do filthy things for another hit, including going back to other games.
Because of 2 and 3, the hub is now redundant. Just auto-queue me for the next run.
I still hate that teams auto-disband after runs. Building rapport with my team over multiple runs and making new friends through that is a major reason for me having 1200 hours in V2 and under 300 in Dt. Yes, you can join up, but it’s just so much easier to just not disband in the first place.
I just don’t feel a drive to play more than one or two runs in a row, and the game seems to be designed to intentionally give me opportunities to bail on it. I appreciate the work FS has done on this, especially since the way the launch went. It’s still one of, if not THE best 40k shooters around right now. Unfortunately, for everything that’s changed since launch, not a lot has changed - The foundational game is great, but everything around it still kind of sucks.
This is where I’m at. So many parts of this game need to be rebuilt from the ground up or else all of the systems that are already making the game a chore to play will just get worse as more content is added. Whoever thought stacking all of this RNG on top of each other was a good idea needs to get their head checked.
If there’s no indication that any of these systems are getting big changes in the next couple of updates I’m probably just gonna have to hold out hope for Darktide 2. It’s all so disappointing.
Honestly after the patch tripled/quadrupled plasteel (in Dangation) and added many 360+ items to shop getting a great weapon was quite easy, adding better end rewards increasing with diff and objectives adds to this.
Damnation being easy, even a “crappy” 340s with T3 blessings and perks, 1 of each being user picked is more than adequate. A level 30 with a few hours of experience in Heresy and those “crappy” 340s will do just fine embarking on Damnation.
Double edges sword of course as the better rewards attracts unprepared people who just want to be carried in Damnation, but that’s another story, though related here.
Melk runs are basically cakewalks too now and his inventory has been quite decent, if I didn’t already have lots of good to near-perfect stuff, there are lots of good items Space Bardin has had for sale.
RNGesus can still hose you but on average they made obtaining good loot easy, some people just want perfect everything for that dopamine hit, I get it, but it’s not needed.
If you thought VT2’s “crafting” RNG was annoying, as light as it was, then yeah anything else will annoy you a lot more.
Nobody in VT2 Cata really gave 2 Skaven poops about “crafting”, many of the the broader DT audience seems to obsess over it a lot it seems.
No one playing cata in VT2 cared about crafting because they probably had the reds they wanted and could just change their gear load out with some rolling. Darktide trying to get perfect gear is practically impossible. You will never achieve what you really want and just have to settle. Even just basic blessing combos are very difficult to acquire on weapons like force swords with a dozen blessing types. Curios are pretty much impossible.
Try the double modifiers on damnation, I’ve had some really hard (but great fun) games with hi intensity / extra specialists. Do these legendary people from vt2 still find those games easy? Dogs/fog and dogs/dark are not so bad but Hi/Specialists was amazing and a great feeling to survive and win in those match’s for me.
I don’t see a problem with this. Makes quickplay missions more chaotic and fun than having a group that casually walks through damnations. If you can’t somewhat consistently carry games, then playing on that difficulty is a risk you are signing up for.
That is a fundamental issue in of itself.
Some people do just want perfect everything, but that isn’t the main problem. A massive amount of replay-ability in tide games comes for many people in the form of trying out different class+feat+weapon+blessing combos and the like. The current crafting system, primarily the horrid lock system and terrible blessing unlocking system, severely hinders people’s ability to try out different things.
Here’s my personal example:
I spent dozens of hours getting a good Autopistol and it was strong and fun to use for the time. The issue is I eventually got bored of using thatweapon and the idea of spending dozens (or hundreds in the case of some of the karked up rare weapons blessings) of hours grinding a new build using stuff i’m already bored of was not appealing at all. I eventually just uninstalled Darktide and am probably not playing again until an update comes out that lets me actually try builds i’m not bored of.
Funny thing about that. Me and 2 other friends that played Vermintide 2 basically never played Cata again after we found out it didn’t give loot. We wanted to play different builds and that takes crafting loot to do. I eventually played a bit more Cata after getting a bunch of reds since I was the most die hard Tide player in my group. Basically, having easy access to trying out different things is important in a game that lets people make their own builds. No rocket science here folks.
Eeeh i guess i can say i’m a Tide vet, 300 h in V1, 1500 h in V2. I think specials spam is a boring way to rise difficulty it moves game towards more chaotic and arcade rather than slow paced and immersive. V2 feels “arcady” so i realy was happy DT started as a bit more tactical coop. Hunting Grounds actually is a good example. It forces whole team to gather closer and take some defensive spot, while Shock Troop turns DT into Serious Sam.
I played just a few of STG with randoms it was challenging sure cause specials spam stress you more, especially when game spawns 2 poxbusters from the air right infront of you, lol. But it’s unfun difficulty design for my taste. I prefer more when there are less some of specials and elites enemies (still a lot cause horde game in the end) but they are more challenging to fight and punish you for mistakes harder, rather than enemies are not challenging but game will spawn them a lot to exhaust you untill you will make a mistake. Like for example 6 ragers with higher move and atack speed, punishing player with hard berserk hits because he was too slow to react and block, well is’t just more interesting for me than 10 ragers that can do something to you only when you are disabled by dog or trapper.
Yeah I get that. Elite enemies in Darktide don’t feel as scary as they should. I think it has a bit to do with the weird way toughness works. The toughness system is super forgiving for fighting quality enemies and unforgiving for fighting quantity enemies. That’s just my personal gripe with toughness though.
Yes, elites were designed along with toughness bleedthrough mechanic, but than devs removed it almost completly. I mean there are still a lot of ways to make it more interesting without bleedthrough, like enemy move and atack speed, reducing cooldown between atacks, higher stagger resist midst atack animations or even more different atack patterns/abilities (enraged crushers like scrakes in Killing Floor 2). And i keep saying in different threads about no stormvermin equivalent. No need to invent anything even, Nurgle plaguebeares can take this niche, it also could be interesting that the most common elite to have infected armor type, but not flak.
Picking specific maps is an exercise in futility where I am, I’m afraid. It takes too long to get a full team in T5 (another reason I hate the auto-disband). I just have to roll for quickplay and hope I don’t get a low-intensity run.
Yeah, this is me. That style is unfortunately not an option in DT with the amount of rng involved in getting a strong weapon of a specific type. It feels like the design is intended for us to either pick one weapon, grind for it and specialise in it, or land a random weapon with good stats and build into it. Not for me, thanks.
lol, you’re right that it isn’t like that 100% of the time, but it is enough of the time that this is my impression of that difficulty. I feel like the pool of damnation players here is small and they’re almost all 1000+hr V2 vets. T5 runs just feel like going through the motions most of the time.
Since I play mostly cata, I obviously don’t meet people like your friends. OTOH, the one thing that people who just enjoy it, as opposed to relative newbies, do is NOT shout at anyone picking up a grim or even a tome in cata.
Sure, but I could at least tolerate it. RNG on weapon types, modifier score, mod distribution, finding blessings, and then applying them. On curios it would largely be their “blessing”. Then you can at least craft everything perk and blessing to what you want with enough resources (assuming you found the blessings). Would feel a lot more like VT2. Still not ideal but I would at least play the game.
Love your point about bonding with the team. It would be really great if we could just stay grouped after each run. Or at least have a button at end game allowing the people who press it to group up… I think they kind of did that at launch but it never worked so they silently removed it instead of fixing it
You nailed it. Weapon stats are the last thing I look at these days. I search for:
Decent item level
2 perks that aren’t both really bad
2 blessings that aren’t both really bad
As a result, I don’t have 3 copies of my favorite weapons with different stats to play around with (like I probably should with the amount of playtime I have). I have half a dozen different weapons that simply aren’t stuck with a perk/blessing that is objectively wasted.
I’m not against removing the locks, but I’d rather they do a really robust pass on perks/blessings and attempt to make them all somewhat viable. There will always be meta and something that people are asking to nerf or leave alone, but nobody will ever want +1 stamina and +15% sprint efficiency on a force staff. Nobody will ever want terrifying barrage and run-n-gun on a surge staff.
We need a perk/blessing revamp that makes the worst stuff go from feeling like the old autopistol to the new autopistol.
